14 | New Scientist | 29 August 2020News
ArchaeologyColin BarrasAN UNUSUAL 3700-year-old
grave unearthed in Spain
shows how little we know
about some ancient burial
practices. At the Humanejos
site, 20 kilometres south
of Madrid, there are about
100 ancient tombs. None is
quite as strange as grave 31.
Inside the 1.2-metre-deep
grave, the body of a 15-year-old
youth was placed, sitting
upright. He was then partially
buried, leaving his head and
shoulders exposed to the
elements. Eventually, the body
decayed and the youth’s upper
body collapsed – at which
point more dirt was added to
the grave to seal his remains.
It is a strange sequence of
events, but it is the only obvious
way to explain the arrangement
of bones in the grave, according
to Ana Herrero-Corral atthe Complutense University
of Madrid and her colleagues.
They found all of the bones
of the boy’s lower skeleton
preserved in their correct
anatomical position – in a
seated pose – suggesting
that this part of his body
was held in place by earth
as the body decayed.
But the bones of the boy’s
upper skeleton, including his
skull, were scattered in a
jumbled mess, indicating that
this part of his body wasn’t
buried as it decomposed.
Nothing about the grave
is typical. It is very rare to
find ancient inhabitants
of Spain, or anywhere else,
buried in a seated pose,
write the researchers.They say that it is even more
unusual in the Spanish
archaeological record to find
evidence of “exposure” rituals
where the body, or parts of it,
were deliberately left unburied,
although there are places in the
world where this is done today.
It is difficult to interpret such
an unusual burial. It is possible,
write the archaeologists, that the
boy received special treatment
because he was a high-status
individual. Arguing against
that idea is the isotopic evidence
in his bones, which suggests
he ate a poorer diet than other
members of his community.
Perhaps, instead, the funerary
ritual was a punishment, but the
boy’s bones show no evidence
he was executed. However, the
grave did contain a single flintarrowhead, which might
indicate he died from a
violent injury that damaged
a vital organ without leaving
a mark on his skeleton (Journal
of Archaeological Science:
Reports, doi.org/d6z8).
It is a “tough call” to interpret
the burial, says Tobias Richter at
the University of Copenhagen,
Denmark. But he leans towards
the idea of punishment or
sacrifice. “It is certainly possible
that the person could have
been buried alive and then shot
[with the flint arrow],” says
Richter. It may also have been
important for part of the body
to then be left on display for
others to see, he suggests.
“The exposure of death
and corporeal decay [in former
times] is such a mystery to us,”
says Mette Løvschal at Aarhus
University in Denmark. “It is
so different from how we
consider our bodies today.”
But Richter says
archaeologists are increasingly
comfortable about recognising
this fact, and not trying to
explain ancient behaviour
through modern conventions.
“We do now have a bit more
of an awareness of how ‘strange’
the cultural practices in the
past appear to us,” he says. ❚Strange burial mystery
unearthed in Spain
These bones suggest the
owner was buried up to
his shoulders in a sitting
position with head exposed“ It’s very rare to find
ancient inhabitants of
Spain, or anywhere else,
buried in a seated pose”
NeuroscienceJason Arunn MurugesuA MAN with a rare brain lesion may
help increase our understanding of
how we process faces.
Known as A.D., the man noticed
three years ago that the faces he
saw on TV were distorted, saying
that they looked as if they were
melting. He then discovered that
when he looked in the mirror, his
own face was also affected. In each
case, it was only the right half of
a person’s face that was distorted.
Doctors then found that A.D. has
a lesion in the fibres connecting
the brain’s two hemispheres.
Jorge Almeida at Coimbra
University in Portugal and his
colleagues showed A.D. pictures
of 20 faces and 20 other objects,
like a car and a bell. They found that
distortions only occurred when A.D.
looked at faces. They also discovered
that regardless of the angle at which
the faces were presented, A.D.
only ever saw the right half of the
person’s face as if it were melting.
This was true even when the faces
were presented upside down
(Current Biology, doi.org/d65f).
This suggests two new key
aspects of typical face processing,
says Brad Duchaine at Dartmouth
College in New Hampshire, who
worked on the study with Almeida.
“We already knew that faces
were processed differently to other
objects, but now we know that we
automatically fit new faces into a
template, so that we can compare
[them] to other faces stored in our
memories,” he says. This would
explain why A.D. always saw the
same part of the face as distorted.
“It also suggests that the two
halves of a face are processed in
separate hemispheres at some
point,” says Duchaine. He speculates
that this may increase visual
processing speed, as we normally
look at the middle of a person’s face
and so each of our eyes initially
takes in information from opposite
sides of a face. ❚Man sees half
of every face
like it’s meltingThis flint
arrowhead,
found in the
grave of a
sitting boy,
might have
given him a
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